Freeks

by Amanda Hocking

[lizarodz]

3.5

Freeks is my first book by Amanda Hocking. I’ve been reading glowing reviews of her books for years so when I saw her new book, I decided to read it.

First of, this is a historical that reads like an urban paranormal. It takes place in a period of 10 days in 1987. I’m very partial to this decade since I was a teenager back then, so I can relate to the music, cassettes, movies and more. The setting is a small town in Louisiana where the Carnival has been invited to perform. The carnival has your typical rides (like the Ferris wheel), games and also a sideshow kind of shows, including a horror house and fortune reader. Now, most of the people on the sideshow side of things have powers or abilities and they have suffered a life of abuse, prejudice and suffering because of it, and thus, they stick together.

Mara is the daughter of a necromancer who can talk to spirits. She doesn’t seem to have powers and works doing whatever is needed around the camp and the sideshow. Mara is from Egyptian/Hindu decent, so good for diversity. She’s brave, loyal, realistic, and smart.

On the first day in town she meets Gabe and they hit it off right away. Gabe is rich, but down to earth boy that’s very sweet and doesn’t treat Mara like a freak. The romance was way too fast for me. I know that paranormal books lend well for the insta-romance, but I don’t feel like it worked well here. I don’t think Mara and Gabe had enough time to know each other, and hardly spend time together.

I liked that the parents of both Gabe and Mara were present in the story. I also enjoyed the remainder of the characters and the powers they had and learning a little bit about their backgrounds and how they ended up in the Sideshow.

The story is told from the first POV, Mara’s. The writing was very good, but I found the pace to be slow. I think the readers was kept in the dark for too long, with hints here and there of what was going on. Also, the ending was a bit to neat and fast for me, especially after all the build up.

Overall, Freeks is about the paranormal and unique, of accepting the differences, about friendship and family, about right and wrong and about love. It will not be my last read by Hockin